In a document processing environment it is highly desirable to achieve efficient means of processing documents. In general, higher efficiency in the processing of documents translates, in general, into lower business costs. Many businesses, such as banks, casinos, and retail stores, need to process groups of documents on a daily basis.
It is typical in a currency processing operation for one or several employees to prepare stacks of documents which are then passed along to operators of a document processing device, such as a sorting device. For example, in a casino currency processing environment, an employee removes stacks of currency from a number of gaming machines, each stack being from a different gaming machine, and then brings the stacks of currency to a sorting device operator. Using the document processing device, the operator processes each stack of currency, one at a time, stopping between each stack to manually feed the next stack of documents. Furthermore, for accounting purposes it is relevant to know the source of each stack of documents, i.e., the identity of the gaming machine from which each stack of currency was removed. Thus, the operator of the document processing device must manually enter the source of each particular stack of documents.
This manual entry is slow, costly, and prone to error. Processing each stack of documents manually can be very demanding on a human operator and can provide poor and inconsistent results. Because the method relies upon human intervention, the rate at which documents can be processed during a particular day can vary unpredictably. In addition, the chance of human error is extremely high. Furthermore, the employment of two or more persons for retrieving and processing the stacks of documents increases the cost associated with the processing of the stacks of documents.
Thus, there is a need for a document processing device that processes stacks of documents with minimal human intervention so as to expedite the accurate processing of documents, lower costs, and decrease the chance of human error. The present invention is directed to satisfying this and other needs.